The Dawson years
The UCLA Simulation of Plasmas Group was formed in 1973 by the late John M. Dawson. Under his leadership the group developed a suite of FFT-based (spectral) particle-in-cell codes (Dawson, Rev. Mod. Phys. 1983) and used them to study basic and applied plasma physics in magnetically confined plasmas, space plasmas, radiation sources, intense short-pulse laser- and beam-plasma interactions, and plasma-based acceleration.
The group invented the laser wakefield (Tajima & Dawson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 1979) and plasma wakefield (Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 1985) accelerator concepts, and pioneered parallel computing for PIC codes, including the first paper on domain decomposition for PIC (Liewer & Decyk, J. Comput. Phys. 1989). It also invented the subtraction technique, which separates the wakes made by single particles from thermal fluctuations.
Parallel simulation and plasma-based acceleration
Since 1998 the group has been led by Warren B. Mori, and it became a leader in the use of parallel PIC codes for plasma-based acceleration, for laser–plasma interactions relevant to inertial fusion energy, and for relativistic shocks. The group pioneered parallel PIC simulations of short-pulse laser- and beam-plasma interactions, the moving-window technique for plasma-based acceleration, three-dimensional quasi-static PIC, and ponderomotive guiding-center methods in PIC codes. It helped develop Lorentz-boosted-frame techniques and methods to eliminate the numerical Cerenkov instability.
Together with its collaborators, the group helped establish the nonlinear blowout regime of plasma-based acceleration, including beam loading, and new ways of injecting electrons into plasma wakes. Throughout, it has combined full-scale simulations with experiments to unravel ultrafast, intense laser- and beam-plasma interactions, and it has developed PIC algorithms that run efficiently on many-core and GPU architectures.
PICKSC
The UCLA Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Software Center (PICKSC) was created through an NSF Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation award, with Warren Mori as its director, so that the group’s home-grown PIC and kinetic simulation software could have a broader impact. PICKSC released the UPIC Framework and a hierarchy of skeleton codes, made QuickPIC and OSHUN open source, developed educational software, and hosted workshops for the PIC community. Much of the software on this site was developed with its support; its earlier news is in the news archive.
The group today
Since 2020, when E. Paulo Alves joined UCLA, the UCLA Plasma Simulation Group has been co-led by Professors Warren B. Mori and E. Paulo Alves. It is based in the UCLA Departments of Physics & Astronomy and of Electrical & Computer Engineering and works closely with the UCLA Laser–Plasma Group led by Professor Chan Joshi. Our research spans plasma-based acceleration and light sources, plasma astrophysics, laser–plasma interactions and the nonlinear optics of plasmas, and it increasingly combines large-scale kinetic simulation with AI/ML. See our research and team.